So, what is this game about? Well it's a turn based exploration game with some RPG elements where you lead a party of pioneers each with different professions, skills and attributes. You start out in a town where you first have to assemble your party from the tavern, plan out and buy equipment you need from the supply store and get yourself a ship. Or two. Then by conversing with different people you get quests, which may be to follow the steps of the previous explorers that never came back and find out what happened, find treasures, compose an accurate map, find contact with unknown native tribes and 'export' religion or simply be the first to disover a piece of the world. You do all that while surviving the harsh environments with seasons that change each bringing with them a different set of challenges, fighting wildlife and tribespeople, finding food and water and trying not to die of dysentery. With each part of the world you discover, you gain access to larger regions further away from home. It's not that you couldn't go there to begin with but you need more men and supplies, which means you need to collect more wealth beforehand.

What else can you do? One crucial, sort of, aspect of the game will be communication. You see, when you encounter an unknown tribe you are not able to understand them because they speak an unknown language. All foreign communication in the game takes place in form of icons/symbols/glyphs that you have to decipher. To make the players life easier, animals and tribes both share the same system. When you see a wolf start to attack you and this certain icon appears over its head you better remember this, because when you interact with some tribes and the same icon appears, you know you better get out of there.

If you have any questions, suggesstion or bugs to report please post them in the official game forum linked below.

Do download the latest build directly and to get more info about the development please visit the official website.

I'm very happy to announce that a new build is now available. It fixes several issues found in the last version but also introduces a lot of new content and gameplay features. For example along with a simple introduction to the story there is now a basic tutorial mode introducing the core gameplay mechanics.

What else has been added? In more technical aspects terrain now has height, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Higher ground offers greater range of visibility but isn't always the easiest to reach and ofen blocks your way. Quest system has also been rewritten in Lua, eventually allowing you to make your own quests.

In graphics and audio department the campsite and brig now have their own screens. Two new headbobbing tunes have also found their way into the game. That is nearly 30 minutes of original soundtrack now!

Please try it out and let me know what you think. Your feedback will help shape this game. If you like what you see and hear, visit the game's website to see how you can show your support.

Thank you so much :) I think I've heard of that board-game, along with Settlers of Catan, but haven't played those. Yeah, I think you can't compare Pioneers to any specific game but there are similarities to many different games.

I'm not using an actual 'engine', instead it's just some code that is separate from the game but is still tailored for it. But I might clean it up and release it separately, why not.

The worlds are randomly generated with parameters like land mass and type, tree density and such. Multiplayer is not in the scope at the moment because it would lengthen the development time even more. That would be a great addition in the future, though if the lands are very large and each player starts exploring from a different corner, it might take some time until they met, if they did at all :)

Well,multiplayer was great in Age of Empires II,and it was exactly what you said - every player started in other corner of the map,but the players were agaists themselves,so time was really valuable :P

AOE is a real-time strategy game but mine is turn-based. It would have to be simultaneous turns but that's really not how this game is designed. Simultaneous means that all players give their orders, wait for others to complete and then everything is simulated. How my game works is that you give an order and see the result immediately. When you end the turn, you give enemies/animals a chance to move. That wouldn't work in multiplayer, because another player would attack you before you even know it moved. It's a tricky subject :/